Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The new science of meditation

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 396 posts

Re: The new science of meditation

#51

Post by jules22 »

waterheater wrote: post #12

Edit: wow, apparently some people here really don't like Gateway Hemisync. All I've tried to share source material on its claims and make a plea for keeping an open mind. Perhaps those so virulently opposed can find that open mind with meditation. Recommend checking out the Koru system. It's an evidence-based mindfulness system out of the Research Triangle. Regardless, the Monroe Institute already performed groundbre…

> A group in the US Army performed a serious analysis of the Gateway Hemisync process, concluding that "there is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives", which include "out-of-body movement", "terrestrial information gathering trips", and "possible encounters with intelligent, non-corporal energy forms when time-space boundaries are exceeded"

They concluded a lot of woo around when they were looking into silly things such as Targ's Remote Viewing. All of that later was revealed to be nonsense. Army and CIA, while are generally rational, are not necessarily great at critical thinking or science.

Re: The new science of meditation

#52

Post by sghiassy »

Learning about neural networks has helped me understand meditation better.

The ‘bias’ number fed into a neural network neuron is determined by the external training data (or for humans by our experiences)

Meditation allows the neural network itself to reprogram its bias itself internally rather than rely on new external data.

Re: The new science of meditation

#53

Post by d3ckard »

epiccoleman wrote: post #2

> Given that wealthy countries like the US aren’t exactly riding trend lines toward new peaks of mental health (depression rates in American adults are at an all-time high, while young people appear in the grips of a mental health crisis), scalable ways of not just mindfully soothing, but completely re-creating psychological experiences for the better should set off sirens of general, scientific, and funding intrigue…

I agree.

I personally think it's about the world becoming more and more uncertain. Everybody is supposed to switch careers a bunch of times during lifetime, everybody is expected to push their limits, everybody is expected to stay on top ever changing social norms.

It's just too much pressure. There is very little average Joe can do to have a fairly sure good living. While the system has a lot of opportunities for talented people, just getting by on working hard, being punctual, trustworthy and such, is increasingly hard.

As lord Vetinari says, people mostly don't want tomorrow to be better - they want it to be the same. It's more and more unlikely nowadays.

Re: The new science of meditation

#54

Post by permo-w »

deepGem wrote: post #30

Think of cessation, also scripturally described as the “non-occurrence of consciousness,” like voluntarily inducing the effects of general anesthesia. Consciousness switches off without a trace, while the basic homeostatic operations of the body — temperature, heartbeat, breathing — remain online. - Isn't this like the nirvana of nirvanas ? I had heard about some of the monks in the Himalayas able to attain these sta…

I mean as I understand it one way of approaching meditation looks like this: at first you just concentrate on your breathing, avoiding extraneous thoughts, then once you can do that without distraction, you move on and try to step back from your thoughts, watching them arrive and letting them go.

once you can do that—something I could do after a few days of practice—how far are you realistically from being able to not have those thoughts at all? perhaps that's a huge leap, but I would be surprised

Re: The new science of meditation

#55

Post by fredrikholm »

2bitencryption wrote: post #46

A few years ago I tried the very first Headspace meditation courses, back when Headspace was pretty new. It was great! I loved it. I really felt like the narrator was knowledgeable and had something to teach me. His explanations for the process actually made sense, and weren't woo-woo mumbo jumbo. Perhaps it is all placebo effect, but even if so, the effect worked for me perfectly. The problem is, as the industry exp…

Waking Up by Sam Harris.

It's more insight than mindfulness, but remains secular. Loads of content from big names.

Highly recommended.

Re: The new science of meditation

#56

Post by jules22 »

Whenever someone talks enthusiastically about meditation, I remind myself that all the popular meditation gurus I see on Youtube talk nonsense, pseudoscience, lack common sense and use manipulative psychological tricks. None of them admit any errors and ironically are quite conceited for those who claim to have conquered ego.

I am sure meditative states must feel nice. But all I see beyond that are cults and none of the meditators seem that much at detached peace. They get incensed at criticism.

Re: The new science of meditation

#57

Post by choxi »

I’ve been meditating casually for almost 10 years, I couldn’t sit still for a minute when I started and can sit regularly for an hour now.

I still have a lot of skepticism about the sensations that other meditators describe feeling, like jhanas and profound states of tranquility and whatnot. I have experienced deeper calmness and have made some insights about my brain (eg thoughts are like a sensor organ not unlike a constantly generating LLM), but I haven’t experienced anything like the sometimes superhuman claims that come from people in this community. Naval Ravikant has claimed he can experience psychedelic states just through meditation, Nick Cammarata at OpenAI makes claims about achieving perfect equanimity and being able to feel jhanas that are better than sex but also doesn’t feel desire for it because of aforementioned equanimity. There are many others on social media who make similar claims. From the outside, all of these people seem like normal humans, maybe calmer and wiser than usual, but who still seek material comfort and the validation of others just like anyone else does.

I wonder, what do others make of these superhuman meditation claims? How does one verify that their sensations during meditation are real reflections of how the brain works and not just increasingly subtle hallucinations? If you convinced everyone that the brain has a secret mechanism to feel perfect happiness, wouldn’t a lot of people hallucinate that they’ve experienced it even if it wasn’t real?

Re: The new science of meditation

#58

Post by carabiner »

akasakahakada wrote: post #3

Little google search I found this guy. https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2018/2/18/... To conclude that, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the "scientist" quoted in the article is just pure pseudoscience.

He's got a PhD from MIT in molecular biology. So nothing to do with meditation or neuroscience. But he was a scientist for a while. Now he's emeritus.

Re: The new science of meditation

#59

Post by jules22 »

curo wrote: post #19
mohave529 wrote: post #5

"Along a less-traveled route, meditation remains what it long was: a deeply transformative pursuit, a devoted metamorphosis of the mind toward increasingly enlightened states." This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself. As my practice has gotten deeper, I've started to reframe meditation for myself as the process of unrelenting inquiry…

> the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself Fully agree although a lot of devotees of Ramana Maharshi said they fell into silence just sitting in his presence. Improbable but it would be hilarious if scientists could make little "mouna wifi hubs" where practitioners got a silence handicap by sitting around it. In the end though, I'm also skeptical that anything about self-inquiry can be replicated by an addi…

There are a bunch of psychology phenomena that explain such things. No Wifi involved.

I generally find the followers to be quite suggestable by people they designated as a guru.

Re: The new science of meditation

#60

Post by hackingthelema »

> We have ideas like biological taxonomies and genetics that provide a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding and exploration of universally relevant fields. “We need that for the deep end of spiritual experience,” he said. “What works as well in Riyadh, as Rome, as Rio, as rural Alabama? What’s the functional, scalable essence?”

That was the purpose comparative tools like correspondence charts[1] were intended for; Aleister Crowley and Allan Bennett put a bunch of effort of surveying all spiritual experience they could learn about, followed by tabulating it all and trying to pattern match. The result was a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding, though the actual form of it could be heavily criticised.

> Advanced meditation for everyone?

> “My hope is that ultimately, this work will contribute to bringing advanced meditation out of the monastery,” Sacchet said, describing its “incredible promise for moving beyond addressing mental health issues, toward helping people thrive.”

That was also Crowley's primary goal: to show that anyone at all could attain, and easily, while living a normal life, and thought that it would help them thrive. He stated this over and over again.

I love that we're finally making effort towards the thought he had, that

> Diverse as these statements [on mystical experiences] are at first sight, all agree in announcing an experience of the class which fifty years ago would have been called supernatural, to-day may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a proper name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred. (Book 4, Part 1; 1911[2])

though it's 70 years later than he thought. I'd love to be involved in work like this, both as an occultist/experienced meditator, and as a computer scientist / software developer, though I don't know how to get involved. Maybe by contacting the EPRC listed? :)

May all attain!

[1] http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Tree_of_Life:777

[2] https://sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/aba1.htm

Post reply on HN